In the Roger Scruton on altruism thread, some commenters have expressed confusion over the evolutionary explanation of altruism in ants. If workers and soldiers leave no offspring, then how does their altruistic behavior get selected for?
The answer is simple but somewhat counterintuitive. The genes for altruistic behavior are present in both the workers/soldiers and in their parents. Self-sacrificing behavior in the workers and soldiers is bad for their copies of these genes, but it promotes the survival and proliferation of the copies contained in the queen and in her store of sperm. As long as there is a net reproductive benefit to the genes, such altruistic behaviors can be maintained in the population.
Selfish genes, altruistic individuals.
Let’s dedicate this thread to a discussion of other counterintuitive evolutionary truths. Here are some of my favorites:
1. The classic example of sickle-cell trait in humans. Why is a disease-causing mutation maintained in a human population? Shouldn’t selection eliminate the mutants? Not in this case, because only the unfortunate folks who have two copies of the allele get the disease. People with one copy of the allele don’t get the disease, but they do receive a benefit: improved resistance to malaria. In effect, the people with the disease are paying for the improved health of the people with only one copy of the mutation.
(Kinda makes you wonder why the Designer did it that way, doesn’t it?)
2. In utero cannibalism in sharks:
Shark embryos cannibalize their littermates in the womb, with the largest embryo eating all but one of its siblings.
Now, researchers know why: It’s part of a struggle for paternity in utero, where babies of different fathers compete to be born.
The researchers, who detailed their findings today (April 30) in the journal Biology Letters, analyzed shark embryos found in sand tiger sharks (Carcharias taurus) at various stages of gestation and found that the later in pregnancy, the more likely the remaining shark embryos had just one father.
(Kinda makes you wonder why the Designer did it that way, doesn’t it?)
3. Genetic conflict between parents and offspring. Here’s a great example from a 1993 paper by David Haig:
Pregnancy has commonly been viewed as a cooperative interaction between a mother and her fetus. The effects of natural selection on genes expressed in fetuses, however, may be opposed by the effects of natural selection on genes expressed in mothers. In this sense, a genetic conflict can be said to exist between maternal and fetal genes. Fetal genes will be selected to increase the transfer of nutrients to their fetus, and maternal genes will be selected to limit transfers in excess of some maternal optimum. Thus a process of evolutionary escalation is predicted in which fetal actions are opposed by maternal countermeasures. The phenomenon of genomic imprinting means that a similar conflict exists within fetal cells between genes that are expressed when maternally derived, and genes that are expressed when paternally derived.
(Kinda makes you wonder why the Designer did it that way, doesn’t it?)
Can readers think of other counterintuitive evolutionary truths?
Addendum
4. Mutant organism loses its innate capacity to reproduce and becomes a great evolutionary success. Can anyone guess which organism(s) I’m thinking of?
Dumb, dumb. Not mutually exclusive:
1. Gralgrathor “boring people”
2. hotshoe “do[ing] that role now”
FALSE dichotomy. Gralgrathor has more than two and on!y two choices. You present them as two mutually-exclusive choices, but there are at !east four options:
Xe can stop, and hotshoe can do the role
Xe can stop, and hotshoe can also stop.
Xe can continue, and hotshoe can do the role simultaneously.
Xe can continue, and hotshoe can stop.
Note that IRL hotshoe’s options include only those which involve hotshoe stopping, since duty calls. Alas …
It will be real fun again some time, I’m sure. Will be much improved, though, if you learn to pay attention to the possibilities of multiple choices in the interim. Your style is so sadly simplistic, so black and white. And black-and-white is so-o-o-o boring, so 1950 TV show. White cowboy hats v. black hats, boring. And so-o-o unrealistic, so cartoonish. Let’s get real, so we can have some complicated, interesting fun!
1st edition:
6th edition:
It is my understanding that Darwin added “by the Creator” to address complaints by his critics.
Through six carefully revised editions of his theory Darwin never qualified his conclusion. “God did it.”
Deal with it
Darwin was not an “evolutionist.” He was a creationist!
And you conclude this solely on the basis of his adding “by the Creator” in the 6th edition?
In every edition.
Not in the first. The words “by the Creator” were added later. Again, it is my understanding that they were added to address his critics, not because of any particular belief Darwin himself had on that subject.
An analysis of further texts and letters by Darwin suggests that Darwin thought that:
In light of that, and in the light of ones understanding of the reasons for his adding the words “by the Creator” in the closing passages, one cannot easily conclude that “Darwin was a creationist”.
Darwin “truckles” to common opinion. Bad scientist!
But Darwin “truckles” a lot.
I don’t have any reason to believe that Darwin, from his own writings, during the long period of the development of his theory, ever thought that “God didn’t do it.”
Which he plainly states in every edition of Origin.
Except the first.
I just gave you one.
Deal with it. Darwin was a creationist.
What a laugh!
Come out of the closet! I hear its liberating.
I just gave you at least two reasons to think that Darwin considered a natural origin for life, one in his own words. Are you going to ignore that?
LOL Darwin only became a creationist after he revised the final edition of Origin?!
Rock,
No, the words I cited came from letters dating after the publishing of the 6th edition. Did you bother to follow the link I provided?
Darwin was a fucking creationist!
How was the myth that he was not a creationist arrived at, despite what he plainly wrote in every edition of Origin?
Sheesh! How obvious could he be!
Rock,
… Right. So Darwin himself saying otherwise isn’t going to convince you? Well, have fun with that then.
“False dichotomy” is specific about using that as part of a logical argument. That’s not what Gralgrathor was doing.
Neil Rickert
I also, as phoodoo himself admitted, was not saying there were just two options: I was saying there were just two options that would enable him to stay in “the game”.
Rock, why would you imagine that Allan Miiller means anything other than the usual-understood and literal dictionary meaning of “Creationist”?
Is there some point in you asking this question? Is there some textual reason you felt you needed to have him repeat the dictionary definition, or is this some kind of a covert insult? We get those a lot around here; you won’t be the first.
Well, total failure on the part of your imagination, then. I see that Darwin does not meet the definition of “creationist”, so why would someone turn about and pretend that Darwin was an “actual” creationist?
I don’t want to answer for you, but I do know a typical instance is because someone is a godbotherer who wants to claim Darwin was “on their side”:
1) in hopes to shame the evolutionists who don’t bow to Pope Darwin as they (supposedy) should
2) in hopeless attempt to minimize the success of evolutionary biology because, even if we won’t admit it, we (supposedly) still know in our heart of hearts that god/designer/creator was needed In The Beginning
3)) in pure ignorance of the definition of “creationist”
4) well, I don’t know what the other possibilities are, but I’m sure I don’t want to make it a FALSE trichotomy. [N.B. Phoodoo]
Uh, no, this really doesn’t make sense. Where does this comment about Darwin being an “actual”teleologist suddenly come from? Are you just making shit up? Do you have an “actual” argument?
Okay, five sensible words so far …
And slamming back into incoherence again. That was sudden!
What were “creationist theories about biological evolution”? What on earth do you think are “anti-creationist” theories of evolution? Current!y, there is on!y the scientific theory of evolution — and then, there’s whatever else which isn’t scientific — but the science is never “anti-creationist”. It’s just reality, and if the creationists can’t deal with reality, that’s their problem.
I’m anti-Ken-Ham, anti-Eric-Hovind, anti-catholic, anti-islamist, anti-creationist … But a theory cannot ever be any of those things, because theories are not agents with points of view. Individual scientists as persons can be creationists (yes, they can) or anti-creationists (yes, they can), but the enterprise of science, the methodology of science, the content of science, the theory, cannot.
Now, if none of this was what you were trying to say, then it’s rather your fault for being so incoherent to begin with. You were so unclear that I have no way of guessing whether I’m arguing against you or merely agreeing with a point (you thought) you had already made.
Stupid. Tone-deafness, or blindness, or something.
And incoherent, yet again. You will, what? You won’t, what? No, don’t bother telling; I don’t really want to know what (and I bet the others want it even less than I do) but it’s just another example of how you fail to hold yourself together long enough to make a point. Unless your point was simply that you don’t have one. In which case, you’ve succeeded admirably.. Good on ya’, Rock.
No he wasn’t a “creationist”. Deal with it
Could you explain why Darwin’s personal religious beliefs are important to you? Newton believed in alchemy — that doesn’t make his physics less correct. Darwin might have believed in what today is referred to as theistic evolution — that doesn’t change the evidence for the modern synthesis.
“We get those a lot around here; you won’t be the first.”
Yea, well, I don’t get around here a lot.
Who is “we”? Speak for yourself.
Darwin included “the Creator,” because of his obvious Biblical allusion. Read the Holy Bible? You don’t have to read much of it. I don’t want to bore you, but it’s in the first chapter. Nowadays it’s not usually required reading outside of Bible colleges. But it was required of Darwin. He knew exactly what he was writing. He never changed the wording, other than to make explicit that he was referring to God.
Excuse me, but Darwin making explicit, his obvious Biblical allusion to God means he’s an atheist? LOL
Darwin’s religious beliefs are as important to understanding his theory as your religious beliefs are important to your understanding of evolutionary theory.
So now all of a sudden it’s not just a reference to God, but a Biblical allusion to boot?
Wow, that Darwin. Who’da thunk?
No, not really. But then neither Darwin’s personal beliefs nor the way he originally phrased his theory are relevant in this discussion, which concerns our current understanding of evolution.
So, not at all, then?
But that can’t be true as people of all religions and none agree on many aspects of evolutionary theory. Furthermore those areas of disagreement are not split along religious lines.
There’s also this:
… Darwin regretted this sop to religious opinion. In a letter of 1863 to his friend the botanist Joseph Hooker, he said, ‘But I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal term of creation, by which I really meant “appeared” by some wholly unknown process.’
[via Dawkins; Edge.org, 9/22/09]
Darwin had in fact been a typical English religionist in his early adulthood and even throughout the voyage of The Beagle was apparently a surprise to the other officers for his pious orthodoxy. But only two years later he had already developed the doubts which would be such a sore spot between him and his church-going wife for the rest of their lives. (After his death, Emma and their son Francis censored his autobiography to conceal his disbelief.) HIs faith in God was completely broken by the death of their beloved daughter Annie in 1850.
It’s possible that Darwin inserted “by the Creator” into his second edition to placate Emma as much as to truckle “to public opinion”. In either case, he recognized that he himself was not a believer in a Creator, although still feeling the need for an impersonal “first cause”.
“With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.— I am bewildered.– I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I [should] wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe & especially the nature of man, & to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.”
[1860 letter to Asa Gray]
His intellectual peers, after the publication of Origins pressed him to accept the label “atheist”. He refused. He stated he should be called an “agnostic”. But, note, that he equally refused to be seen as a believer or a “creationist”.
Heh, another one looking for the easy way out?
Says the being who, just a few hours ago, addressed us all as y’all:
Ironic,i isn’t it. You can’t be bothered to address any one of us individually when you want to mock us, but when I use the term “we” in the way of any typical forum, you want to challenge me on my inclusiveness.
Tee hee You’re cute when you act dumb.
Yep. Probably more than you have. Tests show that the average atheist (hello, that’s me) is more knowledgeable about religion than the average believer (hello, is that you?).
Yes, I don’t doubt he knew. Knowing the bible is not the problem. The problem for you is whether he believed.
And he didn’t. He said in public many times that he didn’t believe in Christianity nor in the biblical creation stories. Too bad for your silly claim about “creationism”. It’s every bit as stupid as claiming that, because I can quote Shakespeare, I must somehow believe that Shakespeare was the Creator.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy
God save us, can’t one of these creationists/IDists/religionists/anti-evolutionists/whatever-they-are be arsed to use proper common sense?
No, darlin’, using a bible allusion to god does not mean Darwin was an atheist. But, see, no one here – except you – has tried to suggest that it means anything other than a sop to public opinion.
You know what,, people who argue like Rock are the exact reason why I cross the word “god” off my US money. Because I don’t want christian fools to say shit about how me using money with god on it means I must secretly believe. Ya’ think so? Ya’ think it’s a magic word? No, it’s a political statement.
And then the lying sacks go to the Supreme Court and claim it’s okay, it’s not unconstitutional for the US govt to put “god” on our money, or force god into the Pledge of Allegiance, because it’s just “ceremonial deism”.
Suck it, dominionists. Thank gourd your excesses of ignorance and immorality are – finally – driving people away from religion.
One of the moderators please move Rock’s “hot” comment and my reply to Guano.
Sorry, I should not have responded so personally but I’m not going to edit it out now.
I’m off for a bit. Back later, cooler, we hope 😛
Who?
Goodbye.
You’d have to arrive first.
Ngur.
phoodoo,
Bacteria can evolve antibiotic resistance? 😀 Yes phoodoo, that one really is a yawn.
Among the problems for evolutionary theory are:
1) evolution happening.
2) scientists being surprised.
Rock,
Darwin evidently began his life as a Creationist. An ‘actual’ one. He apparently, and steadily, lost his faith. Particularly in the ‘Creation’ bit. Might have something to do with a very influential book on the subject. So technically, he both was and was not a Creationist. Depends when you’d ask him. Why does it matter?